‘Which is okay with me because I like you a lot more.’
‘But don’t you miss your other friends?’ she asked.
‘You’re not listening,’ he said.
‘Neither are you.’
He paused the tape, like he didn’t want to waste this song as background music. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘We’re talking about whether I miss Cal? I eat lunch with him almost every day.’
‘And he doesn’t mind that you spend the rest of your time with me now? None of your friends mind?’
Park ran his hand through his hair. ‘I still see them all at school … I don’t know, I don’t really miss them, I’ve never really missed anybody but you.’
‘But you don’t miss me now,’ she said.
‘We’re together all the time.’
‘Are you kidding? I miss you constantly.’
Even though Park washed his face as soon as he got home, the black around his eyes didn’t come off completely. It made everything he did lately seem more dramatic.
‘ That’s crazy,’ she said.
Park started laughing. ‘I know …’
She wanted to tell him about Maisie and Ben and their days being numbered, etc., but he wouldn’t understand, and what did she expect him to do?
Park pushed play.
‘What’s this song called?’ she asked.
“‘Alison.”’
Park
Park played Elvis Costello for her – and Joe Jackson, and Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers.
She teased him because it was all so pretty and melodic, and ‘in the same phylum as Hall & Oates,’ and he threatened to evict her from his room.
When his mom came to check on them, they were sitting with a hundred cassette tapes between them, and as soon as she walked away, Park leaned over and kissed Eleanor. It seemed like the best time not to get caught.
She was a little too far away, so he put his hand on her back and pulled her toward him. He tried to do it like it was something he did all the time, as if touching her someplace new wasn’t like discovering the Northwest Passage.
Eleanor came closer. She put her hands on the floor between them and leaned into him, which was so encouraging that he put his other hand on her waist. And then it was too much to be almost-but-not-really holding her. Park rocked forward onto his knees and pulled her tighter.
Half a dozen cassette tapes cracked under their weight. Eleanor fell back, and Park fell forward.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Oh, God … look, what we did to Meat is Murder.’
Park sat back and looked at the tapes. He wanted to sweep them out of the way. ‘It’s mostly just the cases, I think,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ He started picking up the broken plastic.
‘The Smiths and the Smithereens …’ she said. ‘We even broke them in alphabetical order.’
He tried to smile at her, but she wouldn’t look at him. ‘I should go,’ she said. ‘I think it’s almost eight, anyway.’
‘Oh. Okay, I’ll walk you.’
She stood up and Park followed her. They walked outside and down the walk, and when they got to his grandparents’ driveway, Eleanor didn’t stop.
Eleanor
Maisie smelled like an Avon lady, and she was made up like the whore of Babylon. They were definitely going to get caught. Talk about a house of effing cards. Jee. Zus.
And Eleanor couldn’t even think strategy, because all she could think about was Park’s hands on her waist and her back and her stomach –
which all must feel like nothing he’d ever en-countered. Everyone in Park’s family was skinny enough to be in a Special K commercial. Even his grandma.
Eleanor could only be in that scene where the actress pinches an inch, then looks at the camera like the world is going to end.
Actually, she’d have to lose weight to be in that scene. You could pinch an inch – or two, or three – all over Eleanor’s body. You could probably pinch an inch on her forehead.
Holding hands was fine. Her hands weren’t a complete embarrassment. And kissing seemed safe because fat lips are okay – and because Park usually closed his eyes.
But there was no safe place on Eleanor’s torso. There was no place from her neck to her knees
where
she
had
any
discernible
infrastructure.
As soon as Park touched her waist, she’d sucked in her stomach and pitched forward.
Which led to all the collateral damage … which made her feel like Godzilla. (But even Godzilla wasn’t fat. He was just ginormous.) The maddening part was, Eleanor wanted Park to touch her again. She wanted him to touch her constantly. Even if it led to Park deciding that she was way too much like a walrus to remain his girlfriend … That’s how good it felt. She was like one of those dogs who’ve tasted human blood and can’t stop biting. A walrus who’s tasted human blood.
CHAPTER 40
Eleanor
Park wanted Eleanor to start checking her books now, especially after gym class.
‘Because if it is Tina,’ he said – you could tell that he still didn’t believe that it was, ‘you need to tell somebody.’
‘Tell who?’ They were sitting in his room, leaning against his bed, trying to pretend that Park didn’t have his arm around her for the first time since she crushed his cassette tapes. Just barely, not quite around her.
‘You could tell Mrs Dunne,’ he said. ‘She likes you.’
‘Okay, so I tell Mrs Dunne, and I show her whatever awful thing Tina has misspelled on my books – and then Mrs Dunne asks, “How do you know that Tina wrote that?” She’ll be just as skeptical as you were, but without the complicated romantic history …’
‘There’s no complicated romantic history,’
Park said.
‘Did you kiss her?’ Eleanor hadn’t meant to ask that. Out loud. It was almost like she’d asked it so many times in her head that it leaked out.
‘Mrs Dunne? No. But we’ve hugged a lot.’
‘You know what I mean … Did you kiss her?’
She was sure that he’d kissed her. She was sure that they’d done other stuff, too. Tina was so little, Park could probably wrap his arms all the way around her and shake his own hands at her waist.
‘I don’t want to talk about this,’ he said.
‘Because you did,’ Eleanor said.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does matter. Was it your first kiss?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘and that’s one of the reasons it doesn’t count. It was like a practice pitch.’
‘What are the other reasons?’
‘It was Tina, I was twelve, I didn’t even like girls yet …’
‘But you’ll always remember it,’ she said. ‘It was your first kiss.’
‘I’ll remember that it didn’t matter,’ Park said.
Eleanor wanted to let this go – the most trust-worthy voices in her head were shouting, ‘ Let it go! ’
‘But …’ she said, ‘how could you kiss her?’
‘I was twelve.’
‘But she’s awful.’
‘She was twelve, too.’
‘But … how could you kiss her and then kiss me?’
‘I didn’t even know you existed.’ Park’s arm suddenly made contact, full contact, with Eleanor’s waist. He pressed into her side, and she sat up, instinctively, trying to spread herself thinner.
‘There aren’t even roads between Tina and me …’ she said. ‘How could you like us both?
Did you have a life-changing head injury in junior high?’
Park put his other arm around her. ‘Please.
Listen to me. It was nothing. It doesn’t matter.’